Nuclear transverse momentum dependent gluon density at low $x$ and inclusive soft hadron production in proton-lead collisions at LHC

A. V. Lipatov; G. I. Lykasov; M. A. Malyshev

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arXiv · 2603.18312

Nuclear transverse momentum dependent gluon density at low $x$ and inclusive soft hadron production in proton-lead collisions at LHC

A. V. Lipatov·G. I. Lykasov·M. A. Malyshev

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Abstract

We report the results of calculations of inclusive soft hadron production in proton-lead collisions at the LHC in the framework of modified quark-gluon string model (QGSM) extended to $pA$ interactions. Our consideration involves the nuclear modification of previously proposed transverse momentum dependent (TMD, or unintegrated) gluon density in a proton, which provides a self-consistent simultaneous description of numerous HERA and LHC data on $pp$, $ep$ and $\gamma p$ processes. Such nuclear modification is based on well established property of geometrical scaling from nucleons to nuclei. Focusing on the region of small $x$ and low scales, we obtain predictions for transverse momentum spectra of pions and kaons at $p_T \leq 1$~GeV. Our results are compared with recent data reported by the CMS, ATLAS and ALICE Collaborations at $\sqrt s = 5.02$~TeV. We find that the developed approach provides a better description of low-$p_T$ data than the predictions made by other groups.

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A. V. Lipatov, G. I. Lykasov, M. A. Malyshev. 2026-03-18. Nuclear transverse momentum dependent gluon density at low $x$ and inclusive soft hadron production in proton-lead collisions at LHC. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18312

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